Family:
ex-husband: Jonny Lee Miller (actor) married on March 28, 1996 and divorced on February 3, 1999
Biography
Angelina Jolie is an Oscar-winning actress who has become popular by taking on the title role in the "Lara Croft" series of blockbuster movies. Off-screen, Jolie has become prominently involved in international charity projects, especially those involving refugees. She often appears on many "most beautiful women" lists, and she has a personal life that is avidly covered by the tabloid press.In her earliest years, Angelina began absorbing the acting craft from her parents - her father is the Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight and her mother is Marcheline Bertrand, who had studied with Lee Strasberg. At age 11, Angelina began studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. She undertook some film studies at New York University and later joined the renowned Met Theatre Group in Los Angeles. At age 16, she took up a career in modeling and appeared in some music videos. Her exotic good looks may derive from her mixed ancestry which is Czech, French-Canadian, Iroquois and English.In the mid-1990s, Jolie appeared in various small films where she got good notices, including Hackers (1995) and Foxfire (1996). Her critical acclaim increased when she played strong roles in the made-for-TV movies True Women (1997) (TV), and in George Wallace (1997) (TV) which won her a Golden Globe award and an Emmy nomination. Jolie's acclaim increased even further when she played the lead role in the HBO production Gia (1998) (TV). This was the true life story of supermodel Gia Carangi, a sensitive wild child who was both brazen and needy and who had a difficult time handling professional success and the deaths of people who were close to her. Carangi became involved with drugs and because of her needle-using habits she became, at the tender age of 26, one of the first celebrities to die of AIDS. Jolie's performance in Gia (1998) (TV) again garnered a Golden Globe award and another Emmy nomination, and she additionally earned a SAG Award.Angelina got a major break in 1999 when she won a leading role in the successful feature The Bone Collector (1999), starring alongside Denzel Washington. In that same year, Jolie gave a tour de force performance in Girl, Interrupted (1999) playing opposite Winona Ryder. The movie was a true story of women who spent time in a psychiatric hospital. Jolie's role was reminiscent of Jack Nicholson's character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), the role which won Nicholson his first Oscar. Unlike "Cuckoo", "Girl" was a small film that received mixed reviews and barely made money at the box office. But when it came time to give out awards, Jolie won the triple crown -- "Girl" propelled her to win the Golden Globe, the SAG Award and the Academy Award for best leading actress in a supporting role.With her new-found prominence, Jolie began to get in-depth attention from the press. Numerous aspects of her controversial personal life became news. At her wedding to her Hackers (1995) co-star Jonny Lee Miller, she had displayed her husband's name on the back of her shirt painted in her own blood. Jolie and Miller divorced and in 2000 she married her Pushing Tin (1999) co-star Bill Bob Thornton. Jolie had become the fifth wife of a man twenty years her senior. During her marriage to Thornton, the spouses each wore a vial of the other's blood around their necks. That marriage came apart in 2002 and ended in divorce. In addition, Jolie was estranged from her famous father, Jon Voight.In 2000, Jolie was asked to star in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). At first, she expressed disinterest, but then decided that the required training for the athletic role was intriguing. The Croft character was drawn from a popular video game. Lara Croft was a female cross between Indiana Jones and James Bond. When the film was released, critics were unimpressed with the final product, but critical acclaim wasn't the point of the movie. The public paid $275 million for theater tickets to see a buffed up Jolie portray the adventuresome Lara Croft. Jolie's father Jon Voight appeared in "Croft", and during filming there was a brief rapprochement between father and daughter.One of the Croft movie's filming locations was Cambodia. While there, Jolie witnessed the natural beauty, culture and poverty of that country. She considered this an eye opening experience, and so began the humanitarian chapter of her life. Jolie began visiting refugee camps around the world and came to be formally appointed as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Some of her experiences were written and published in her popular book "Notes from My Travels" whose profits go to UNHCR.Jolie has stated that she now plans to spend most of her time in humanitarian efforts, to be financed by her actress salary. She devotes one third of her income to savings, one third to living expenses and one third to charity. In 2002, Angelina adopted a Cambodian refugee boy named Maddox and in 2005 adopted an Ethiopian refugee girl named Zahara. Jolie's dramatic feature film Beyond Borders (2003/I) parallels some of her real life humanitarian experiences although, despite the inclusion of a romance between two westerners, many of the movie's images were too depressingly realistic -- the film was not popular among critics or at the box office.In 2004, Jolie began filming Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) with co-star Brad Pitt. The film became a major box office success. There were rumors that Pitt and Jolie had an affair while filming "Smith". Jolie insisted that because her mother had been hurt by adultery, she herself could never participate in an affair with a married man, therefore there had been no affair with Pitt at that time. Nonetheless, Pitt separated from his wife Jennifer Aniston in January 2005 and, in the months that followed, he was frequently seen in public with Jolie, apparently as a couple. Pitt's divorce was finalized later in 2005.Jolie and Pitt announced in early 2006 that they would have a child together, and Jolie gave birth to daughter Shiloh that May. They also adopted a three-year-old Vietnamese boy named Pax. The couple continues to pursue movie and humanitarian projects.
Movie list
Mr. And Mrs. Smith
Alexander
Shark Tale
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Taking Lives
Beyond Borders
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
Life or Something Like It
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Original Sin
Gone in 60 Seconds
The Bone Collector
Girl, Interrupted
Hell's Kitchen
Playing By Heart
Pushing Tin
Gia
George Wallace
Playing God
Foxfire
Love Is All There Is
Mojave Moon
Hackers
Without Evidence
Cyborg 2
Kung Fu Panda
Original Sin
Wanted
Changeling
Beowulf
Awards: 1997: Golden Globe: Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries or Made-for-TV Movie, George WallaceJolie first became personally aware of worldwide humanitarian crises while filming Tomb Raider in Cambodia. She eventually turned to UNHCR for more information on international trouble spots. In the following months she visited refugee camps around the world to learn more about the situation and the conditions in these areas. In February 2001, Jolie went on her first field visit, an 18-day mission to Sierra Leone and Tanzania; she later expressed her shock at what she had witnessed. In the coming months she returned to Cambodia for two weeks and later met with Afghan refugees in Pakistan where she donated $1 million for Afghan refugees in response to an international UNHCR emergency appeal. She insisted on covering all costs related to her missions and shared the same rudimentary working and living conditions as UNHCR field staff on all of her visits. As a result of assistance rendered to their former subjects the Royal family of Swat (princely state) have awarded her the honor Khanum Sahiba the equivalent of being made a lady. Jolie was named a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador on August 27, 2001 at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva.
"We cannot close ourselves off to information and ignore the fact that millions of people are out there suffering. I honestly want to help. I don't believe I feel differently from other people. I think we all want justice and equality, a chance for a life with meaning. All of us would like to believe that if we were in a bad situation someone would help us."
Jolie on her motives for joining UNHCR in 2001.
Jolie has been on field missions around the world and met with refugees and internally displaced persons in more than 20 countries. Asked what she hoped to accomplish, she stated, "Awareness of the plight of these people. I think they should be commended for what they have survived, not looked down upon." In 2002, Jolie visited the Tham Hin refugee camp in Thailand and Colombian refugees in Ecuador. Jolie later went to various UNHCR facilities in Kosovo and paid a visit to Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya with refugees mainly from Sudan. She also met with Angolan refugees while filming Beyond Borders in Namibia.
In 2003, Jolie embarked on a six-day mission to Tanzania where she traveled to western border camps hosting Congolese refugees, and she paid a week-long visit to Sri Lanka, meeting Tamil refugee orphans in Jaffna. She later concluded a four-day mission to Russia as she traveled to North Caucasus. Concurrently with the release of her movie Beyond Borders she published Notes from My Travels, a collection of journal entries that chronicle her early field missions (2001–2002). During a private stay in Jordan in December 2003 she asked to visit Iraqi refugees in Jordan's eastern desert and later that month she went to Egypt to meet Sudanese refugees.
On her first U.N. trip within the United States, Jolie went to Arizona in 2004, visiting detained asylum seekers at three facilities and the Southwest Key Program, a facility for unaccompanied children in Phoenix. She flew to Chad in June 2004, paying a visit to border sites and camps for refugees who had fled fighting in western Sudan's Darfur region. Four months later she returned to the region, this time going directly into West Darfur. Also in 2004, Jolie met with Afghan refugees in Thailand and on a private stay to Lebanon during the Christmas holidays, she visited UNHCR's regional office in Beirut, as well as some young refugees and cancer patients in the Lebanese capital.
In 2005, Jolie visited Pakistani camps containing Afghani refugees, and she also met with Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz; she returned to Pakistan with Brad Pitt during the Thanksgiving weekend in November to see the impact of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. In 2006, Jolie and Pitt flew to Haiti and visited a school supported by Yéle Haïti, a charity founded by Haitian-born hip hop musician Wyclef Jean. While filming A Mighty Heart in India, Jolie met with Afghan and Burmese refugees in New Delhi. She spent Christmas Day 2006 with Colombian refugees in San José, Costa Rica where she handed out presents. In 2007, Jolie returned to Chad for a two-day mission to assess the deteriorating security situation for refugees from Darfur; Jolie and Pitt subsequently donated $1 million to three relief organizations in Chad and Darfur. Jolie also made her first visit to Syria and twice went to Iraq, where she met with Iraqi refugees as well as multi-national forces and U.S. troops.
Jolie and Condoleezza Rice at World Refugee Day, June 2005
Over time, Jolie became more involved in promoting humanitarian causes on a political level. She has regularly attended World Refugee Day in Washington, D.C., and she was an invited speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2005 and 2006. Jolie also began lobbying humanitarian interests in the U.S. capital, where she met with members of Congress at least 20 times from 2003. She explained in Forbes: "As much as I would love to never have to visit Washington, that's the way to move the ball."
In 2005, Jolie took part at a National Press Club luncheon, where she announced the founding of the National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children, an organization that provides free legal-aid to asylum-seeking children with no legal representation which Jolie personally funded with a donation of $500,000 for its first two years. Jolie also pushed for several bills to aid refugees and vulnerable children in the Third World. In addition to her political involvement, Jolie began using her public profile to promote humanitarian causes through the mass media. She filmed an MTV special, The Diary Of Angelina Jolie & Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa, portraying her and noted economist Dr. Jeffrey Sachs on a trip to a remote group of villages in Western Kenya. In 2006, Jolie announced the founding of the Jolie/Pitt Foundation which made initial donations to Global Action for Children and Doctors Without Borders of $1 million each. Jolie also co-chairs the Education Partnership for Children of Conflict, founded at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2006, which helps fund education programs for children affected by conflict.
Jolie has received wide recognition for her humanitarian work. In 2003, she was the first recipient of the newly created Citizen of the World Award by the United Nations Correspondents Association, and in 2005, she was awarded the Global Humanitarian Award by the UNA-USA. Cambodia's King Norodom Sihamoni awarded Jolie Cambodian citizenship for her conservation work in the country on August 12, 2005; she has pledged $5 million to set up a wildlife sanctuary in the north-western province of Battambang and owns property there. In 2007, Jolie became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and she received the Freedom Award by the International Rescue Committee.
After she and Pitt donated $1 million to relief efforts in Haiti following a devastating 2010 earthquake, Jolie visited Haiti and the Dominican Republic to discuss the future of relief efforts. She also donated $100,000 to the United Nations for the 2010 August flood relief operations in Pakistan.
Salt (2010) $20,000,000
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